All posts tagged Afghanistan

Slovakia’s foreign minister said Friday that two Slovak soldiers and one from the U.S. were killed during a suicide bomber attack on the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

“First of all we would like to express our deep condolences to the bereaved families,” Miroslav Lajcak said. “We are strongly deploring any attack against Slovak soldiers and coalition forces in Afghanistan.”

Neither the Slovak minister nor ISAF officials have identified the three killed servicemen.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the rebel group was behind the attack, which took place in an eastern district of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, near a local base of North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces. Read More »

U.S. President Barack Obama will Friday meet 20 presidents, mostly from central Europe, for dinner in Warsaw to discuss the situation in the Middle East and North Africa on the final leg of his European tour. In bilateral talks with Polish officials, Mr. Obama is set to talk about defense and energy issues—developments that could reduce Russia’s influence in Europe’s central and eastern parts.

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski, whose country will hold the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of the year, said Thursday he’d discuss democratic movements in eastern Europe, North Africa and Asia on a panel titled “Roads to democracy. Share experiences of democratic transition.” Read More »

It’s not worth crying over the death of someone with so much blood on his hands, Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said Wednesday, referring to the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. However, his initial reaction to bin Laden’s death was much less somber — “YES, THEY DID!” he tweeted, congratulating the U.S. on killing the terror mastermind.

Soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., for which al Qaeda eventually claimed responsibility, Poland agreed to commit soldiers to Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Poland now has more than 2,600 soldiers on the ground there and Polish leaders welcomed the news of bin Laden’s death, saying justice had been served.

Mr. Sikorski Wednesday defended the decision to kill bin Laden instead of putting him on trial. Read More »

An avid hunter, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski compared the NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan to a hunt when he met U.S. President Barack Obama in the Oval Office this week.

Mr. Obama nodded politely when the Polish president shared his carefully-crafted metaphor with reporters, but in Poland the remarks raised some eyebrows.

Mr. Komorowski was making a renewed case for an American military presence in Poland to bolster the country’s security. Poland has contributed more than 2,000 soldiers to the Afghanistan mission and wants a reciprocal commitment from the U.S.

“I’ve allowed myself to illustrate this to the president in a rather simple way: if we are to depart on a long hunt together, we must first make sure that our house, our women, our children are safe,” Mr. Komorowski said. Chuckling, the Polish president added: “The hunting is then better.”

His puzzled interpreter padded the remark, saying the Polish president thought he illustrated his point in “a very picturesque way.” But back in Poland, commentators have been quite merciless to the president, who is already famous for wanting to extract shale gas in open pits or calling some Danish women he’d met “as ugly as whales.” Read More »

A Hungarian soldier died and another remains in a critical condition after Monday’s ambush in Afghanistan, Hungarian Chief of Defense Lt. Gen. Tibor Benko said on state television MTV1 Tuesday. Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack. The incident is unlikely to change Hungary’s strategy for its Afghanistan mission.

Sgt. Judit Abraham Papp, a 32-year-old female soldier, died at the scene on Monday. The Hungarian soldiers were members of the Hungarian Armed Force’s Reconstruction Team, traveling in a convoy of the International Security Assistance Force. The convoy, transporting 29 Hungarian soldiers, was attacked in the province of Baghlan, on its way to Mazar-i-Sharif.

Ms. Papp was the third Hungarian soldier killed in Afghanistan. Read More »

The previous president, Lech Kaczynski, who died in an airplane crash in April, saw Poland as a regional power and tried to bring together the leaders of countries in Eastern Europe to counter Russia’s influence in the region. He pushed for infrastructure projects that would make Poland and the region less dependent on Russian energy.

He spoke of Poland’s ambition to be part of the G-20 group of leading nations. According to various counts, the country makes it to the top 20 largest economies in the world, but it’s not in the elite group. It was told that the formal representation by the European Union will be quite enough.

Mr. Kaczynski advocated for higher military involvement of the U.S. in Poland, which would end a silent agreement that allowed Poland to join NATO in 1999 in exchange for promises made to Russia that the U.S. military wouldn’t station in the country. Read More »

The latest death of a Polish soldier in Afghanistan convinced the Polish government, busy supporting its presidential candidate in the final week of the election campaign, to publicly discuss the possible pullout of its 2,000 soldiers from the country.

When asked for his reaction to Saturday’s death of a Polish soldier killed by Afghan insurgents, acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said over the weekend he wanted his country to pull out from the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan, and that he was formally beginning a procedure toward that goal. Read More »

NATO’s general secretary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, got mixed reactions Friday to his request that the Czechs boost their contingent in Afghanistan. NATO wants Czechs to commit additional field hospitals and units to train Afghan security forces.

Mirek Topolanek, the leading right-leaning politician and head of the Civic Democrat party, fully agreed with Rasmussen’s point-of-view that all members of the military alliance should show solidarity and support the ramping up of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He supports the increase.

Just as President Obama discusses the idea of putting Afghanistan more in charge of its own security, Central European troop contributors, despite growing casualties, mull sending more soldiers and equipment to the country. Read More »

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